


Of apples and spectacular things

by emei



Series: The Shakespearean heroine!Merlin 'verse [4]
Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:20:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emei/pseuds/emei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will doesn't play with girls, he plays with <i>Merlin</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of apples and spectacular things

**Author's Note:**

> Written at the the party at [camelot_fleet](http://camelot-fleet.dreamwidth.org/) and prompted by [](http://briar-pipe.livejournal.com/profile)[**briar_pipe**](http://briar-pipe.livejournal.com/) , this is a prequel to Fire in her hands but can be read independently. All you need to know is that Merlin was born a girl in this universe.

When they’re very small, Will’s mother leaves him with Hunith to get more work out of the way without having a baby underfoot. Hunith places him on the floor next to Merlin and lets them roll over each other while she sews, sitting by the fire and blocking it from them with her legs. Will hardly remembers it, has only a vague picture of the golden firelight spilling out over the floor, feeling like safety.

He remembers playing outside on the patch of grass, running circles around Hunith’s cottage while Hunith tended to her vegetable patch, crouched in the tentative sun of spring. Will stood by the front door, Merlin on the other side of the cottage, hopping from one foot to another. “Ready, steady, go!” said Hunith (again, and again, patiently), and they were off, running like mad around the cottage to catch up with each other.

“Will plays with _girls,_” Toby throws out, and spits through the gap of his missing front teeth.

“I don’t!” Will replies, hotly. And he doesn’t play with girls – he plays with _Merlin_, and that’s different. Merlin is his best friend. Toby makes it sound like he prances around with just any silly little girl. Merlin is like… something else, yeah.

If Toby hadn’t already lost them, Will would take out his front teeth to prove his point.

After Merlin beats him in a fight and rolls him in the mud, Toby is a bit quieter. He managed to give her a nosebleed first anyway and it looks pretty terrifying, blood-red stream over her mudstained face. Hunith gives Merlin the scolding of the year, and she looks very small sitting by herself on the front steps, after. Will comes to sit next to her, lifts her chin with his thumb, says: “Hey there”.

Merlin smiles, shaky but growing stronger. “I was brilliant, yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Will. “Toby had no chance against you.”

Merlin has a thing for apples. Will has a thing for nicking them for her, from the apple tree of the oldest, crankiest man in the village. He runs like the devil himself was after him, jumps over a fence with his arms full of fruit, just to see the Merlin’s wild smile when she meets him. He loves the way she eats apples, in large bites, fruit juice dribbling over her chin.

When they’re fourteen and Will’s father has gone to war and not returned, Ealdor seems to be made of nothing but mud and straws and too small houses where the roof wants to smother him. Only Merlin laughs, and it still rings golden to Will, when Merlin throws her dress on the bank of the river, carefree, to splash out after him into the cool water. She sloshes water all over him and he yells, outraged, and everything but this moment disappears, all but the water running down his arms and dribbling in his eyelashes and the sunlight glinting off Merlin’s wet hair.

He overhears a bit of the lecture Merlin gets for bathing in the river (propriety and good manners, and what good girls do) and worries a bit, later, but Merlin only shrugs and laughs and says race you to the apple tree!

In September that same year they end up hiding in the hay, running into the barn and throwing themselves down, shaking with laughter and hiding their giggles against each other’s shoulders, as Toby stomps past, soaking wet and furious. And then Toby is forgotten, because Will has his cheek pressed to Merlin’s head, and her hair is very soft and she smells a little sweaty, mixed up with drying hay and something very her, and she has one hand on his thigh and one on his chest, supporting herself. Will hears the rhythm of their breathing, irregular, shallow.

A hen cackles to the left of them and Merlin jumps, and then – _oh what the hell,_ smoke rises against the roof and tickles at his nostrils, and the hay is bloody burning, that shouldn’t even be possible.

The chickens flap their wings and cackle wildly as Will yells and Merlin looks dumbfounded and half the village starts running for water. When the hubbub has died down and the hay is wet and blackened but thankfully no longer burning, Will thinks that impossible is a pretty useless word around Merlin. She looks guilty and uncomfortable. He tips her chin up with his thumb, says: “Hey there,” and smiles broadly. This is ridiculous and how it always is – things only go wrong in this spectacular way when Merlin is involved. And Will, well, to be honest, he rather thinks Ealdor needs some spectacularity.

Will is surprised when no one questions the fact that a fire started in the barn while they were in it – instead of the epic tell-off he was expecting, he gets nods of approval for his quick reaction. Only Hunith looks at him and Merlin with something like suspicion, which is only to be expected: she is Merlin’s mother, after all.

There really is no logical explanation for that fire. They’re out by the river when Will looks to Merlin, dangling her feet an inch above the water surface, and says: “That fire the other day. Did you, like… do something?”

Merlin accidentally dips her feet in and sends a spray of water up on the hem of her dress. Her eyebrows are drawn together, and she’s biting her lip, hard. “I, um, I… That is. I really shouldn’t say, okay.” She goes back to chewing at her lip, though studying Will now instead of her feet.

“Jeez,” says Will, still surprised even though he expected it, and drags his thumb along the underside of Merlin’s jaw, tipping her chin up. “Everyone watch out for Merlin. Dangerous girl, that one.”

Merlin’s mouth quirks up at the corners, and she’s still biting her lip like she’s trying to keep the smile at bay but she can’t, and it turns into the widest grin Will’s ever seen on her.

“I think I could do it again, but smaller. Wanna see?”

“Hell, yeah!” Will leans back on his elbows and settles to watch her. Merlin draws her feet up underneath her to sit crosslegged on the riverbank, and pushes her eternally escaping hair behind her ears (which, never mind how much they stick out, always lose the battle against her hair). She closes her eyes for a second, clearly concentrating, and then stretches her arm out, palm open, fingers splayed, focusing on a tuft of grass. It starts to sizzle and sends a small trail of smoke raising, but Will hardly notices for the fact that Merlin’s eyes have gone _golden._ She looks like something foreign, all of a sudden, thrillingly different, magical (she must be, he realizes in a flash), and then the tuft of grass turns into a red-orange flame dancing in the wind, and Will laughs loudly. The giant grin breaks out over Merlin’s face again and she’s back to being his Merlin, his very best friend with bright blue eyes laughing at him.

“Brilliant!” he says, in awe.

“Yeah?” asks Merlin.

“Yeah,” says Will with a grin and punches her lightly on the arm. “You’ve got to show me everything.”

Merlin shows him many things, all the extraordinary stuff she can do, and Will gapes a bit, and laughs and marvels, and steals her more apples. Probably she could get them herself if she wanted to, but it’s a thing, all right, that Will nicks the apples and Merlin eats them, and they both share the blame if needs be. After a while he gets used to her golden eyes. They’re odd, but still Merlin. Merlin’s told him that they’ve got to be careful, no one can know about her magic. Will really wasn’t supposed to either, but that’s all right, because Merlin is his best friend and it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone else.

In the beginning, they are very careful, and Merlin only does magic in their preferred secluded spot by the river, or out in the woods, but as they never even get close the getting caught they start getting more careless. And that’s why they end up sitting in Hunith’s backyard one summer day with Merlin making stick figures wage a tiny battle on the ground in front of them and Will providing running commentary. Neither of them hears Hunith’s steps until she’s looming over them. The fighters collapse in a pile of sticks in the dirt. Will suddenly thinks that Merlin’s magic has to come from somewhere – does that mean that Hunith…? Her eyes are terrifying, burning with anger, and Will has never actually been frightened by her before, but now he is.

“William. Go home,” she says. He tries to make some protest but Hunith turns her gaze squarely on him and says: “Now.”

Merlin is hunched in on herself in an unhappy pile. He knocks her knee with his own, and then he leaves.

The next day Merlin looks a bit unhappy but not devastated, as she tells him she’s supposed to go to Camelot, to be an apprentice to an old friend of her mum’s.

Will kicks at an old tree root. “The secret’s safe with me. I don’t see why you’ve got to leave.”

“I know,” says Merlin and fiddles with her sleeves. “But mum says there are others in the village who’re getting suspicious, and that’s not safe. And I’ll get to learn more, Will, new really exciting things! Mum says this friend of hers might even have books of magic.” She sounds excited, now. Will kicks at the tree root again. It starts to crumble into reddish-brown dust. “I still don’t see why you can’t just visit for a week or so and then come back.”

Merlin puts a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugs it off. Then she makes the already fallen leaves dance over the ground and up to him, twirling, but Will is furious with her magic today and not at all in the mood for tricks. He strides away, deeper into the woods, and Merlin doesn’t follow.

They’ve said their goodbyes the evening before, but Will still gets up at dawn on the day Merlin’s leaving Ealdor. He sneaks to their apple tree and picks the five most beautiful apples, perfectly ripe, round and red, gleaming with the morning dew. He imagines them crisp and juicy, for Merlin to eat in big bites.

When Will gets to the cottage, Merlin is already gone.

“She left with the first light,” says Hunith, eyes kind but voice unyielding.

Will knows he couldn’t catch up with her even if he tried – Merlin is fast than him, despite her clumsiness, always has been. He usually blames it on how ridiculously skinny she is.

He goes down to the river, and throws the apples in one by one, as far upstream as he can manage, watches them float past him again. The sun is rising over the treetops. He thinks of Merlin in Camelot, wonders if she won’t feel trapped by so many buildings and walls and roofs. He would. He crouches on the river bank, picks up a smooth stone and throws it, making it skip over the water, and then another, and another. He gets it to skip thirteen times, and it’s the best he’s ever done. Merlin manages fifteen – though, ha! – she might be using some magic trick to cheat. Will settles on the bank, not minding that the grass is still wet, and thinks that he’s going to ask her when she comes back.


End file.
